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Saturday, 15 February 2014

My Story - Part 2 - Alarm Bells Start to Ring

As we engaged in the journey forward, there
was a strong acknowledgement of our own brokenness and our total reliance on
God - which was why we obeyed when we believed God was telling us not to call
another pastor (“do not to ask for a king!”).

To ensure we had ‘back-up’ in case of any
future unresolvable conflict in the church, we established a board of reference.
This consisted of four men from various places around the country with whom we
would cultivate relationship and to whom both the leadership and the body could
turn for advice and ‘oversight’. One of these men had been an associate pastor
at our old church (board member D).

For the most part over the next few years
things seemed to go well, and we felt God was blessing our efforts to hear him
and be obedient. There was a spirit of goodwill amongst the leadership, and
even one difficult situation, which resulted in one of the elders being
replaced, seemed to have been negotiated reasonably enough. (In hindsight, I
see that we had put ‘principle’ before relationship in that incident, but at
the time, we thought we were doing really rather well.)

Late in 2011 there was an incident where
elder J found himself in fairly sharp disagreement with the rest of us over one
particular issue. This was seemingly resolved with what appeared to be a clear
directive from God. Unfortunately, what we didn’t know was that elder J had been
deeply wounded by the incident and he carried his hurt silently for several
weeks. Elder J and his wife were close friends with my husband and I, so it
soon became apparent to me that things were not as ok.

In January, I raised the issue with elder J
and urged him to share his hurt with his fellow elders. There was great
resistance to my suggestion and I was informed that board member M had
cautioned him to be careful with both what he shared, as well the timing of
that sharing.

This set off alarm bells for me… but I
trusted these people and believed they only wanted the best for us, so I tried
to bury the sense of rejection and pain that was growing inside me. (Dissonance,
anyone?)

In my saner moments, I could see an
increasing tendency for J (and his wife who was at every elders meeting) to
treat me as an inferior. We were a team of equals, yet if I made a decision on
my own, I had to have a meeting to explain and justify myself to him. If he
thought we should make a particular decision, it wouldn’t matter what arguments
I put forward - I would be beaten into submission with the ongoing repetitious
comeback of, “I strongly believe…” In the midst of this, my physical and
emotional health was deteriorating rapidly.